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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727596">Curses of January</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner'>John_Steiner</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Alternative History - Fandom, LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:42:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>531</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Amid the January Uprising of 1863 two soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army venture toward a Polish village with one of the new allies to Tsar Alexander II. Dispatching the monstrously transformed witch, the two soldiers, Dmitri and Peter await the results. Whether they could live with the consequences remained to be seen.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Curses of January</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Where are we going?" Dmitri asked before lighting up his pipe.</p><p>"Small village," Peter answered, "See if new tactic works."</p><p>Dmitri and Peter were ordered to break off from the battalion just days after the armies of Tsar Alexander II crossed into Poland. Their scouting led them to the first village where Alexander II's partnership would be tested.</p><p>"Sonia!" Peter hollered, "Daylight is fading! It's time."</p><p>Barefoot steps brushed through the grass and across small puddles. From Behind Dmitri heard the canine sniffs and a licking of chops.</p><p>"How many, you think?" Dmitri asked Sonia hulking behind them.</p><p>"Thirty?" Peter added.</p><p>"Moar," came a raspy huff.</p><p>"Too much to handle?" Dmitri wondered, and turned to see Sonia's fully therianthropic form.</p><p>"No," Sonia growled back.</p><p>"Too bad you didn't bring chicken-legged house with you," Peter chuckled, "Could have saved us couple days walk."</p><p>It was an old wives tale about witches and their enchanted houses, which Peter didn't seem to believe, though Dmitri wondered how truth there was to the superstition, given that they had real witches working for the Imperial Army.</p><p>Despite her lupine expression, Sonia clearly revealed her annoyance at Peter's reference. Though transformed into her bestial state, Sonia wore ragged robes with a rope tied around her waste and pouches fastened into that.</p><p>Peter, Sonia, and Dmitri tread onward until seeing the first hints of peasant homes, and found a particularly dense patch of the forest to camp in. Their orders were no fires, so Peter and Dmitri ate from cold tins, while Sonia went hungry.</p><p>Nightfall was when Sonia set out to fetch her meal, while Dmitri stood watch, his eyes to the village where Sonia headed. He spied Sonia skulking between straw-thatched houses, until she picked out something he neither heard nor could smell.</p><p>Sonia disappeared around the back of one home, and for an hour Dmitri heard only silence. After, he witnessed the witch exit, still as an upright wolf, and moved onto the next home. Most of the night went that way, Dmitri seeing Sonia sneak between homes bestowing who knew what curses.</p><p>Though, from the last home before dawn, Sonia exited with something dangling from her jaws. She padded off to another stretch of forest and vanished from sight. Moments later, Dmitri was started by a sudden plop behind him, and he spun around.</p><p>With the first glow of morning, Dmitri and a suddenly woken Peter made out the red gore and small limbs loosely attached to a form no longer recognizable as human.</p><p>Sonia began on the liver and other organs, much to Dmitri's revulsion now that his brain registered that Sonia had made off with an infant in the night.</p><p>Dmitri and Peter couldn't bring themselves to have breakfast, but Tzar Alexander II's new allies did their job.</p><p>Crops across the Polish countryside failed. Well water became inexplicably putrid. Livestock offspring were lost in stillbirths. The peasants who supported insurgents in full rebellion, found their lot worsening over the course of eighteen months. Deprived of the will to fight, they were crushed easily by the army in the spring of 1864. Tsar Alexander II would not have his handpicked proxy rule questioned.</p>
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